For anyone familiar with the French school system, you will know that Les Enfants get either a whole day or a half day off school on Wenesdays. Luckily for this au pair, my Enfants fall into the Whole Day Off category. AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TO MAKE UP FOR IT ON SATURDAYS.
So my day begins with me setting my ambitious alarm for 7:30 am, getting up panicked and confused at that hour after spending too much time blogging and youtubing the night before, stumbling to my phone, switching it off, turning the light on to wake myself up, and then crumbling back to bed with a vague whimper of just five more minutes.
I then wake to bright sunshine at 8:30 am, fifteen minutes before my scheduled arrival at the breakfast table, curse under my breath, and stumble into the shower. I try to fix my sleep-deprived face and get dressed in something less than Parisian Chic. I make it to the table fifteen minutes late.
La Mere spouts french words 94735847 miles a minute, including instructions for my 11 hour shift and some Very Firm Words with Les Enfants.
I eat my Miel Pops slowly and make a cup of Hard Water UHT Tea. It's grey outside.
I plan a route for how to ake Le Garcon to his dentist appointment and find out it's close to an hour from the house. YAY!
We find the bus stop, get on the bus, and get off at the wrong stop. La Mere calls me asking where I am and I try to explain that we are walking over the Seine on a bridge and I'm not exactly sure where.
I drag Le Garcon along quickly, and he's complaining about my Marche Trop Vite.
We find out we're about fifteen blocks form the dentist with fifteen minutes to go, and I receive another too-fast french phone call with La Mere. She gives up on us and I drag Le Garcon to the dentist, which we finally find. The building is an old apartment, and we stand confused trying to open the gate until an elderly lady lets us in. The elevator is an old number that looks like a bird cage and has a swing-open door as well as the standard slide-closed ones. Glass surrounds the metal cage so we can see the floors pass below us. Inside the dentist office, all traces of antiquity are lost and we sit in the crisp white waiting room complete with French high fashion magazines and city guides, and Le Garcon plays on a computer. It's very white and spacious and weird white tree-trunk-esque decorative poles balance between the floor and ceiling.
The dentist reattaches his loose brace, and we leave. Lunch is frantically made before getting Le Garcon dressed in a Harry Potter costume, tracing a scar on his forehead with my black eyeliner pen, and ushering him out the door, present in hand, witch/wizard hat on, to The Birthday Party.
En route to The Birthday Party, the sky opens up and Le Garcon/Harry Potter gets soaked, along with his cape and hat. I'm soaked too but that's the least of my priorities, because god forbid Le Garcon's costume/Le Garcon himself gets wet.
We make it to the birthday party and I return home to play a board game, make crepes, and do homework with La Fille. She decides she wants some time to play by herself so I get a much-needed sanity break.
GOD I LOVE WEDNESDAYS.
After being chided by La Mere for not tidying the rooms of Les Enfants, getting dinner on the table and cleaning up, I sit here furiously tapping before leaving for a much-needed movie/wine/pizza date with the girls.
GET ME OUTTA HERE GET ME OUTTA HERE GET ME OUTTA HERE in the wise words of Imogen Heap.
At least it's Thursday tomorrow!
Love always,
Coral
Funnier than 'The Nanny Diaries'!:))
ReplyDelete